Noni Hazlehurst is one of the most recognisable and loved faces on Australian screens. Whether you grew up with her twinkling blue eyes on Play School (‘which window shall we look through today?’) or watched her most recent performance in the heartwarming feature film June Again (where she plays a mother with dementia reconnecting with adult children played by Claudia Karvan and Stephen Curry), Hazlehurst projects a unique blend of toughness, kindness and humour.
Growing old in front of an audience is notoriously difficult, but at nearly 68 years of age, Hazlehurst faces it full on in her latest gig as presenter of one of three segments of SBS and Joined Up Films’ factual series What Does Australia Really Think About… In her episode, the topic is Old People, where the research suggests that bias against old age is even more deeply held than sexism or racism.